Image Credit: Getty Images / Yutthana Gaetgeaw

The previous posts in my series on AIHA’s strategic plan have covered the pursuit of knowledge, advancing the OEHS profession, and member and volunteer engagement. This month, I’m focusing on the fourth and final topic: impact and awareness. In this domain, our strategic plan specifies the following goals:

1. Build a sustained pipeline of potential members and future OEHS professionals.
2. Work with policymakers and allied organizations to advance public policies that protect workers and their communities.  
3. Increase awareness of the value and impact of the profession.

Pipeline Development

Over the years, AIHA has focused on building the OEHS professional pipeline in various ways—from partnering with organizations like the Occupational Hygiene Training Association, which develops new OEHS professionals around the world, to our work on career stages through the IH/OEHS professional pathway. These approaches have had their successes, but more work needs to be done.  

That work begins with research. We need to know more about what younger professionals hope to gain from their careers in general and from associations in particular. We need to better understand the reasons why a potential member doesn’t join AIHA. Are the barriers related to finances, experience, awareness, some combination of the three, or something else entirely?  

To answer these questions, we will begin by analyzing the results of recent surveys and conducting focus groups at AIHA Connect. Areas of emphasis will include the transition of students to early-career professionals and our communications with professionals who are nonmember customers of AIHA—those who, for example, have purchased a book, attended a conference, or registered for a webinar, but haven’t yet joined. We will revisit the mix of benefits provided to different levels of membership. Improvements to our website—more on that below—and the integration of various software products used by staff should provide greater insight into members’ and customers’ preferences. We’ll also expand our educational offerings for EHS generalists and traditional safety professionals.

Advocacy

So far, the 2020s have featured a once-in-a-century pandemic and an unprecedented attempt in the United States to severely constrain the federal government’s role in research for occupational health and safety. In both cases, AIHA met the moment thanks to strong leadership from our Board of Directors and the dedication of our members, staff, and volunteers. Perhaps during no other period in AIHA’s history has our impact been more tangible than it is now.  

Our strategic plans weren’t created specifically to react to these crises, but they facilitated our response by clarifying our goals and identifying a flexible framework for meeting them. That’s the value of strategic plans: they allow for adaptive means while keeping the ends in sight, even in the face of external upheaval.

In terms of advocacy, the Restore NIOSH campaign we launched last year offers a case study in collective action. Members and allies used a tool on our website to send thousands of messages of support for NIOSH to their congressional representatives. Our efforts attracted attention from publications like Bloomberg, which noted, in a September 2025 article (subscription required), that the economic benefits of the agency’s work amount to billions of dollars. The campaign evolved over time to include advocacy for other OEHS agencies such as OSHA, MSHA, and the Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board. After NIOSH staff were brought back earlier this year, AIHA pivoted to our current Preserve NIOSH campaign, which remains a key focus of our advocacy efforts.

We recently added advocacy expertise to our staff with the hiring of Jeremy Robinson as senior manager of government relations. Jeremy will focus on the federal level, while the What Works Institute, which was instrumental in our NIOSH campaigns, shifts to managing state affairs. Recent efforts at the state level have included leveraging the AIHA Technical Guide for Wildfire Impact Assessments for the OEHS Professional to influence new wildfire remediation guidelines under discussion in California, Colorado, and elsewhere. We also continue to promote the AIHA Heat Stress App, which uses an adjusted Wet Bulb Globe Temperature (WBGT) calculation to inform risk and recommend actions to users.  

Improving Value

Our marketing team has taken the lead in communicating the value and impact of the OEHS profession. Fans of our award-winning IH Heroes comic books, which were designed to introduce the profession to middle- and high school students, will be excited to learn that new comics are in the works, with a new cast of characters—to be called OEHS Heroes—and new stories. Efforts to popularize technical, scientific material can also help our pipeline work by introducing new audiences to our profession, potentially resulting in more students adopting OEHS as a career.

We are also undertaking a wholesale redesign of the AIHA website. The main goal of the redesign will be to make information easier to find while also improving the site’s look and feel. I’ve heard from several of you who have had trouble finding what you need on AIHA.org. With the vast amount of important work our volunteers produce each year, periodic redesigns are necessary to maintain the site’s usability.

Core Values

Our journey through AIHA’s strategic plan has emphasized specific objectives and the strategies we use to obtain them. But the strategic plan is more than just a checklist; it is an expression of our organization’s core values. A reminder of those values seems an appropriate way to end this series:

• Prevent: We strive to prevent workplace illnesses and injuries.
• Empower: We believe everyone is empowered to prevent workplace illnesses and injuries.
• Advocate: We advocate and develop science-based policy and practice.
• Collaborate: We work with each other and external partners to help prevent workplace illnesses and injuries.
• Respect: We respect and honor our diverse communities.

Thank you for helping us achieve our goals and living our values.